How to Stop a Dog From Rolling in Poop and Dead Things

You cannot train the urge out of a dog, so the whole game is interrupting the sequence before it starts, and that means learning to spot the posture two seconds early. Rolling in something foul is a deeply hardwired behavior that appears in wolves, foxes, and coyotes, and no amount of correction after the fact will remove it. What does work, reliably, is a handler who recognises the pre roll posture, an interrupter the dog cannot ignore, and a recall that is strong enough to compete with the single most rewarding thing on that walk. Most owners can cut the frequency by ninety percent inside a month with those three things.

Why they do it

Nobody has proven a single explanation, and the two leading ones are both plausible.

The scent camouflage theory holds that carrying a strong environmental smell disguises the dog's own odour, which would be useful when stalking. The information sharing theory holds that the dog is carrying news of a food source back to the group, and there is some field observation of wolves doing exactly that.

Either way, the important part for you is that it is not naughtiness, it is not a hygiene failure, and it is not something the dog can be reasoned out of. The behavior is self reinforcing, meaning the roll itself is the reward, so every successful roll makes the next one more likely. That is why management matters more than correction here.

The pre roll posture

This is the actual skill, and it is learnable. About two seconds before a dog rolls, you will see a consistent sequence.

• The dog stops moving and drops the nose to a fixed point. Not casual sniffing that moves along. A fixed, committed point.
• The head tilts to one side while still down. This is the tell. Once you see the shoulder start to drop with the head tilted, you have roughly one second.
• A shoulder dips toward the ground, usually the left.
• The dog looks briefly away from you, or turns their body so their head is on the far side from you. Some dogs do this quite deliberately.
• Then the shoulder goes down and it is over.

Watch for the fixed nose and the head tilt. If you only learn one thing from this article, learn that pairing, because it buys you the two seconds you need.

The interrupt

Once you see it, you need something that reliably breaks the fixation. Your dog's name will not do it, because at that moment you are competing with something far more interesting.

1. Use a novel sound, not a word. A sharp whistle, a clap, a "hey" delivered once and loudly. Novel beats loud. If you use it constantly it stops working.
2. Move away at the same time. Sound plus your movement in the opposite direction. Dogs orient toward moving handlers.
3. Pay it enormously. When the dog breaks off and comes, it gets chicken, not kibble, and a party. You have just asked the dog to give up something extremely valuable and the payment has to match.
4. Do not go and get the dog. Walking toward a dog who is over a dead thing gives them a reason to hurry up and finish.
5. Never punish after the roll. The dog is now covered in it and the reinforcement already happened. Correcting after the fact teaches the dog to roll further away from you.

The management layer

Interrupting works when you see it coming. The rest of the time, you need the environment to be doing some of the work.

• Use a long line rather than off leash in the fields and beaches where this happens. Thirty feet gives the dog freedom and gives you a physical stop.
• Scan ahead, not at your dog. Look for the gulls, the flies, the flattened patch of grass. If you spot it first, you route around it.
• Learn your dog's hotspots. Most dogs have specific locations they roll in. Change the route for a month.
• Beach and shoreline dogs, be particularly alert at the tide line. Dead fish and seals are the jackpot.
• After livestock fields have been muck spread, stay off them for two weeks. This is not a training problem you can win.

The recall that competes

The honest truth is that this is a recall problem in disguise. A dog with a genuinely conditioned emergency recall breaks off a dead bird. A dog with a conversational recall does not.

• Build a separate emergency word that you use fewer than five times a week and that has never been used to end fun.
• Pay it every single time, for life, with something the dog only gets for that word.
• Practise it at 90 percent difficulty, not 100. Call the dog off a sniff, off a squirrel at distance, off another dog at forty feet. Do not test it on a dead fish until it is solid on everything below that.
• Thirty reps a week for six weeks to build it, then two or three a week to maintain it forever.

Cleaning up when you lose

You will lose sometimes. Plain dog shampoo does very little on the sulphur compounds in decaying matter. The mixture that actually works is one quart of three percent hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda, and a teaspoon of dish soap, mixed fresh and applied to a dry coat, worked in for five minutes, then rinsed thoroughly. Keep it out of eyes, do not store it in a sealed bottle, and expect it to lighten dark coats slightly if you leave it on too long. Tomato juice does not work.

Keep a towel and an old bottle of the ingredients in the car if this is a regular event in your house.

If the underlying problem is that your dog will not come back when there is something better on offer, that is the piece to fix first. The free blueprint. Download the Rock Solid Recall blueprint has the distance progression and the payment schedule for building a recall that holds up outdoors.

Ready to train your dog?

Every drill in this article comes from the WorldWide K9 Academy course library. If you want the full step by step system, start with the $5 intro course.